


the most unspecial boy in the World

by deathrae



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fate Swap, Gen, Role Reversal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-23
Updated: 2017-04-23
Packaged: 2018-10-23 02:33:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 8,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10710351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathrae/pseuds/deathrae
Summary: But what if, what if a little after the events of Birth By Sleep, Sora and Riku... swapped places.What if the most unspecial boy in the World... was just a little more jealous.





	1. Birth by Sleep

Riku takes the keyblade from Terra. Riku keeps his promise to Terra and doesn’t tell.

Sora promises Aqua he’ll follow Riku to the ends of everything to bring him back off dark paths, and Sora sees the faces of another world on his beach but has no answers for why or where they came from. That question, that single question:  _ where did the man and the woman come from, and where did they go? _ haunts him for years. Makes him wonder. Makes him squint at the horizon and whisper to Riku, “What’s out there? What is it that’s beyond the clouds?”

Riku smiles a secret smile and tells him there are other worlds, a bigger World, under one sky. Sora tells Riku he wants to see them, wants to see that sky, and Riku says that maybe someday they will, but when he says “they” it sounds just a little too much like “I” and Sora wonders why but never knows the answer.

No one promises to bring  _ Sora  _ back from darkness.

 

Sora cries on the beach and doesn’t know why, but Riku is open and warm and kind and while he speaks of helping those who look for it, Ven pulls sideways and hides himself away in the quiet halls of Riku's wiser heart.

Sora cannot shake the feeling that he has given something away and never got it back and it  _ eats _ at him.


	2. Kingdom Hearts 1

A girl comes to live with the mayor. Sora and Riku adore her and squabble good-naturedly about who she likes better but no one ever means anything by it until it’s a little too late and they’re just a little too old for the fights to really not mean _anything_.

Riku finds the door. He doesn’t tell Sora, but Sora hears him muttering to himself about it.

More questions. Even fewer answers.

Sora starts to whisper to Riku of seeing the other worlds and the great single sky and Riku smiles his secret smile still but together they build the raft. Sora eggs Riku on to race him for Kairi’s affection. Riku’s legs are longer. The race was never fair in the first place.

Sora rushes to the island when the storm hits. He hasn’t come this far to see the raft wrecked by something so small as a storm, and when he reaches the island Riku’s boat is there already and _so is Kairi’s_ and something twists inside, something angry, something _hungry_. Riku tells him to check the Secret Place while he checks the shack because Kairi’s footsteps washed away in the rain and their voices don’t pierce the downpour to call for her.

When Sora crawls inside to look for her, the creature in the cloak whispers to him.

He listens.

Riku frets and pulls at his gloves when Sora doesn’t come back out of the Secret Place for long, long minutes. He rushes inside but he finds it almost empty, almost empty except for the door and _Kairi_ , Kairi doll-like and glass-eyed and whispering his name like she doesn’t understand what the letters mean and she falls through him like a ghost and his heart feels just a little heavier but not from grief.

Riku frantically fights liquid ink with a wooden sword and yelps when claws cut into his skin and leave red lines like ribbons on his arms that sting in salt-air. When the ground lurches under him without actually moving and when the wood in his hand gives way to polished silver he relaxes into it like he was born to it because _now_ , now he understands. This is why the man came to the island all those years ago; this is why he promised not to tell. All of it in preparation for this moment.

He fights back with all the wisdom and brightness he can muster.

Sora waits for him across the bridge. He smiles his thousand-watt smile and reaches out to him.

“Come with me,” Sora says. “I thought you wanted to see the other worlds?

“ **I'm not afraid of the darkness. Are you?** ”

Riku reaches for him but his hands fall short. The darkness is thick around his ankles and feels like swamp.

His shadow is so very, very tall.

 

Pluto finds a boy in Traverse Town. Pluto finds a boy with silver hair and a smile on his face and just a little sadness behind his bright, bright eyes because somehow this doesn’t feel like what he was promised and this doesn’t feel like what he promised to keep. This doesn’t feel like strength to protect much of anything. This feels like loneliness and cobblestone and the echo of his voice back at him from the walls and adults looking at him like he’s a child and telling him the truths his heart already knew.

He doesn’t like Leon very much.

 

Sora wakes up in Hollow Bastion and screams out for his friends until his throat hurts.

He doesn’t like Maleficent, but Maleficent likes _him_.

 

Riku isn’t sure what to think of the King’s men, but they’re well-meaning and friendly and there is a thrill in his chest when he sees their ship. He’ll finally see more worlds, and on one of them, _somewhere_ , is Sora.

 _Wait for us, Kairi. We’ll find you_.

He fights through world after world, locking keyholes, charting new paths. Donald teaches him the easy slide of his hand across the dashboard, Goofy tells him when to pull levers, when to push buttons, and the crackly radio voices of the chipmunks tell him when to roll, when to dive.

Piloting is so different from boating and he _loves it_.

He knows Sora would love it too. _Will_ love it.

 

Every world feels just a little emptier when it doesn’t have Sora in it.

 

The belly of the whale feels emptiest of all.

The colors and the pulsing walls make him feel sick but it makes his heart sing to fight alongside Sora again, working together to fight through the Heartless in the center.

“This puppet is the key to getting back Kairi’s heart.”

Sora’s words make his stomach lurch, make his blood feel like icewater in his veins. “What’s wrong with Kairi?”

Sora won’t give him a straight answer.

Sora has never _lied_ to him before.

Riku isn’t sure what hurts more.

 

The whale felt empty, but the pirate ship feels like the world is unraveling around him.

The only reason he’s sure Kairi isn’t already dead is the shallow rise and fall of her chest.

Sora’s smile looks just a little hollow.

Just a little wrong.

“The Heartless listen to _me_ now, Riku.”

Riku’s shadow thrashes him soundly and he flees elsewhere in the ship, running until he can’t run anymore, and when he’s run out of room to run he _flies_.

He doesn’t _feel_ happy enough to fly, but the hope that his friends aren’t dead, aren’t lost, not yet, the hope that he can bring them back— _both_ of them—keeps his body light and his feet off the ground.

 

Sora’s red sword is frightening and clangs against the keyblade with a sound like a knife on tin.

He fights like an animal, furious and frightened. He fights like he did on the island, clumsy and unpracticed but he never runs out of energy and it takes all he has for Riku to just defend, block blow after blow, panicked and yelling for Sora to stop.

“Please, talk to me! We can save her together!”

“You stopped caring about _her_ a long time ago!”

Riku finally hits back and he feels sick at the impact of his keyblade on flesh and bone instead of shadow and darkness.

 

Sora flees, cursing that despite all his new power, Riku was still better. Still stronger.

The creature in the cloak whispers to him in the deepest darkest corners of the castle and he’s so angry.

“What? You’re saying my heart is weaker than his?”

“Hasn’t it always been?”

The words burn him like brands.

“Your weakness is why _he_ has the Keyblade, and you do not.”

He lets the creature into his heart and it laughs.

_Hello, Sora. I am Ansem._

 

Ansem wears leather clothes and Sora’s body and sits above the Keyhole and _waits_ while Riku slays the dragon.

It seems fitting, somehow. Kairi always said he was her knight in shining armor.

 

Riku isn’t sure what scares him more. The echo in Sora’s voice of another, different person, or the way Sora smiles as he screams spells across the battlefield.

**_“Welcome oblivion!”_ **

The groan of pain Sora gives every time the keyblade slams heavy and solid into his shoulder, his ribs, his legs—Sora and not Ansem, because it is still Sora’s body and Ansem is not so kind as to take the hits himself—makes Riku’s chest hurt and makes him curse his own hands.

 

Riku, the same Riku who stood on a beach and talked of hearts reaching out for help, who held a wisdom and an understanding of Light that eight-year-olds shouldn’t have, isn’t eight anymore.

He tries to be just as wise anyway. Just as understanding.

He only lets his hand shake for a moment as he picks up not-Sora’s twisted, terrible keyblade and shoves it into his chest.

 

Sora glows gold and holds Ansem back with all the strength he has left and Kairi has never seen Sora look so scared. He doesn’t smile now, not when he holds out his arms to keep Ansem at bay and _begs_ her to run.

 

Kairi’s voice calls Riku back from a terrifying glimpse of darkness and it weighs on his shoulders even after he’s come back to the light.

Kairi can’t explain where Sora went and Riku’s heart twists with worry and fear.

 

He hates Ansem but it doesn’t make him feel any better when he beats him and no door has ever been as heavy as the one with Sora on the other side.

But Sora smiles at him from the other side of the door with _his_ smile, the one that always came too easily and too often on the islands, warm and real and with only the tiniest flicker of pain hiding behind it now to betray the damage that’s been done. And Riku knows he doesn’t have to worry, even though the door shuts and locks with a _thud_ that’s too loud, too final.

Sora will be fine.

Eventually.


	3. Chain of Memories

Riku forgets. Sora never can. Riku will remember, but only slowly.

Sora fights through a castle of lies and can’t shake the feeling that the real lies are the ones he’s been telling himself all along.

Ansem’s laugh cuts like the broken glass of shattered dreams and Lexaeus’ tomahawk has all the momentum and weight of a train when it slams into his body. Zexion’s nightmare feels like getting tangled in spidersilk.

The copy of himself fights wild and dangerous and its sword feels sort of like failure, failure tempered with foolishness and sharpened on all of his mistakes. Sora hopes his sword cuts like hope and promise, but mostly it just cuts like a sword, leaving blood and wisps of black shadow littered across the clean white floors.

He forgets what it’s like to breathe clean air. The castle stinks of rotten air and darkness.

Sora doesn’t feel better for having gotten the last laugh.


	4. 358/2 Days

Riku sleeps.

His Nobody is blonde and fluffy-headed in a way Riku never was. He is teal-eyed, and made of quicksilver, but he’s a little too baby-faced to look _just_ like him. He’s a little softer, a little shorter. His Nobody is angry and full of sass and bad comebacks, because keyblade wielders who live in the Light have never been the strongest at wit and charm. Riku’s Nobody smiles a little too big for his face and sits on the clocktower and wonders what it feels like to have a heart. Axel nudges his shoulder and a girl who looks just a little too much like a once-lost Princess laughs and offers them ice cream and Riku’s Nobody smiles sort of like Sora when he’s happy but the reason for that is complicated, and none of the family he’s chosen know enough to ever question why.

Sora hides himself in DiZ’s black coat and when his hair gets long he ties it back to keep it under the hood and he barely recognizes the hollow-faced version of himself that he sees occasionally in mirrors. Mickey pats him on the hand and quotes a wise warrior he once knew but nothing the tiny master-king says can quite dispel the heavy weight of guilt in his heart and the cloying stink of darkness in his lungs.

Sora traces the edges of Soul Eater with his fingers, leather creaking, and wishes he could cut away regret as easily as Shadows and Dusks.

The blindfold is soft and he almost wishes it wasn’t, wishes it scratched at his skin and rubbed his cheeks raw because the darkness hurts, it burns his fingers and it weighs heavy in his stomach and it reeks like smoke and it doesn’t seem like the blindfold should feel like solace, it shouldn’t feel like gentle fingers wrapping around his head and covering his eyes to keep him safe, it shouldn’t feel like fingers tucking into his hair and smoothing it back from his forehead.

It shouldn’t feel like the sound of two warm voices, one rough and one soft, whispering in his ears.

 _We’ll be here. When you’re ready_.

Sora hurts the girl in the coat and he feels sick when he pulls up his blindfold so he can see her face in Light. He curses her faith and tells her to leave them and he laughs when she tries to fight back.

He wants to break her keyblade, because _what right does she have_ to have that face, to wield that blade, to wear that _mask_ , while _he_ still stumbles along in the dark on a road to a dawn that feels like a lie he’s telling himself just to keep from losing his grip on everything.

He can’t look Mickey in the eye when he says he’ll keep using the darkness if it’s what it takes. The blindfold means he doesn’t have to.

Mickey takes Soul Eater and runs his hands over the sword and talks to him in that soft, just a little bit squeaky voice about honor and Light and the things we deserve and the things we _earn_. Sora listens, because it sounds like ritual, but he isn’t sure he entirely understands. When Mickey hands back his sword it doesn’t feel like _sword_ is the right word, it’s a _blade_ but it isn’t complete yet, there’s more he has to do, and he holds the tip in his hand and he promises in the core of his heart that he’ll prove he _deserves_ what he has never yet been _given_.

Mickey promises to keep Riku safe and when Sora smiles his thousand-watt smile it’s empty and Sora pretends he doesn’t know that Mickey can tell.

 

Sora doesn’t remember what he said to the girl who looked like his lost princess. He doesn’t know that he doesn’t remember because she _listened_.

 

Sora waits for the thirteenth Nobody in The World That Never Was and the rain doesn’t quite feel like the rain on the Islands but it’s just similar enough to make his chest feel tight.

He holds the dark keyblade when it’s thrown at him—to him?—and he not-quite-remembers the girl. He flinches. The Nobody knocks him down, mocks him when he’s on the ground. Curses him when he gets back up.

Sora grins and spreads his empty hands. “What’s wrong, Riku!” he calls across the wet pavement. “Finally losing your touch?”

The Nobody clicks his tongue and props a hand on his hip. “Come on, Sora, you’ll never be stronger than me,” he jeers, and then covers his mouth with the sleeve of his coat like he wants to hold in all the words that aren’t his.

“Then it’s true,” Sora says, and Riku’s Nobody’s face can look so much angrier than Riku ever did and Sora yells when a blow from the dark keyblade almost shatters his arm.

 _Sora,_ **_please_** _! You have to stop him!_

He’s out of options.

He takes the blindfold off and floods his whole body with darkness and it doesn’t feel quite like failure but it feels a little bit like desperation and a little bit like giving up.

It feels like letting go of a ledge to drop back to solid ground.


	5. Kingdom Hearts 2

Riku’s Nobody is full of all the rage Riku has never expressed. Sora knows that, in theory, this version of the Nobody has a new personality and a new set of memories, but he doesn’t quite trust DiZ’s machinery to do everything he says it does.

There’s a cold heat in the Nobody’s eyes that make him think of beach trips and wooden swords clacking together.

There’s a fire in him that makes Sora think of chest-deep pain, not heart-deep but close, a pain born from a thousand lies told by men in long black coats and several hundred discarded popsicle sticks and only one with a crown on the end.

Sora watches surveillance footage of the Nobody’s fight with Axel in the basement and all he can do is think, again, of what he said to DiZ about the Nobody when they first retrieved him, when he looked down at the blonde not-copy of Riku sitting unconscious and beaten on a grate.

 _Poor thing_.

He thinks it again when Axel falls back, chest heaving, his face already threatening to bruise where the Nobody’s dual keyblades smashed into him and if Nobodies have bones Sora thinks something in his cheek must’ve broken, because by the time Axel collapses into shadow and re-manifests in the real realm it’s started turning purple.

Sora goes to fetch him while he’s still too weak to struggle.

Sora argues with DiZ. Often. Sometimes about Naminé, but mostly about Riku’s Nobody. He doesn’t regret agreeing to work with DiZ, exactly, but with each passing day he feels a little more like he made a mistake. The old man is obsessed. Unwilling to change. Sora, though, has changed just a little too much. He’s not sure which of them is closer to being in the right.

He wants Riku back, but this doesn’t feel like the right way, and he’s far too well-versed in the _wrong_ ways to have a better suggestion.

Every time he looks in a mirror he flinches. The sound of DiZ’s incredibly uncomfortable laughter when he called himself Ansem rattles in Sora’s memory and makes him feel ill.

 

When Riku wakes up Sora is already gone.

Sora takes Axel and Naminé to the hill at Sunset Station and feels sort of like a father going out behind the woodshed with a sick dog and a shotgun.

Against DiZ’s wishes he lets them go. _Everyone_ deserves a second chance.

 _He_ got one, and he just doesn’t see how they were worse than him, just because they were born without hearts.

After all, Sora’s done a fine job ruining far too many people’s lives.

And _he’d_ had a heart the whole time.

 

Riku climbs out of the pod feeling wobbly and a little fuzzy-headed and his pants are way too tight on him in a way they weren’t when he went to sleep. Donald and Goofy laugh at the way his shirt clings way too tightly to his arms and chest and he tugs at his shirt to try to make it fit a little better but nothing really helps. He leads them outside, intrigued by the machinery and computers and bewildered by the ruined mansion, and when they get into town he looks around, feeling an impossible confusion, a strange mix of familiarity and foreignness.

He leads the way around the city like he’s lived here for years, but when Donald and Goofy ask how he knows where he’s going, he can’t seem to find a good answer and there’s a heavy, unfamiliar ache in his chest that he can’t quite put words to.

He leads them all the way to a shady back alley decorated with ratty furniture and games and occupied by three teenagers. When they frown at him he smiles and laughs uncomfortably and he’s far too groggy to play off his presence in an unfamiliar world. When they walk closer there are words on the tip of his tongue that taste like recognition and memory, and when they introduce themselves their names match them too well somehow, like he’d already known them, but with the haziness of it having been a dream that’s coming true with startling accuracy.

As they race to the station to catch the King, Riku decides to worry about it later, not knowing it will haunt him for days.

He can’t quite shake the feeling that there’s something familiar about the white monsters that come after them, like he’s seen them before somewhere. When he slides around behind the creatures to hit them across the back he finds his feet dancing through well-practiced but unfamiliar steps, his body flitting into the motion like he’s been doing it for months, or maybe just hundreds of days. That feels like two different spans of time, but the logic puzzle of it makes his head hurt.

Even though each one of the white creatures is relatively weak, the empty bodies crumbling under his strikes, he is tired and clumsy and his keyblade feels heavier than it ever has before, his arms weak and soft with lack of use. The sliding dance he weaves across the station courtyard-turned-battlefield looks elegant and practiced but it makes his whole body ache.

Donald and Goofy look tired too, and when the King jumps in to help Riku’s far too relieved to even voice his gratitude. The gold keyblade makes him think of Sora and his smile from behind the door and Riku hopes, quiet and deep in his chest, that he really _is_ okay.

They let the King go but it feels just a little too much like the too-loud click of a too-heavy door. He feels raw and hollow as they buy train tickets.

He cries when they say goodbye at the train station and he’s more sad than he expected, and part of it doesn’t quite feel like his, but part of it does. He remembers Sora, crying on the beach so many years ago, but this time he isn’t sure who needs his help and it leaves him paralyzed, unable to do anything but wonder and hope and wipe away the errant tears and try not to embarrass himself in front of Donald and Goofy and his three new-familiar-old friends.

 

Hollow Bastion is nothing like he remembers it, but considering what it was like before, maybe that’s a good thing. He still doesn’t like Leon very much, but Leon smiles more now, and Riku wonders how much else has changed while he’s been asleep.

When Leon brings him to the bailey he looks down on the horde of Heartless in the chasm and he breathes in slow and even. He knows he’ll never make it through that fight if he jumps in now, and just the thought of it makes him feel even more tired. He’ll do it, he knows he will, when the time comes and he’s a little more ready.

He’s killed more Heartless than anyone he knows and he’ll do it again and again if he has to.

The low husky tone of an Organization member’s voice cuts through his focus like a knife and he feels rage stirring in his chest, a frothing, sharp anger that doesn’t feel... _his_. Before he’s even finished thinking that he’s never felt quite this angry before, he’s manifested his keyblade and run to face the owners of those low, mocking voices.

Riku sneers back at the one with a low, liquid voice and sharp shoulders to his coat. The expression feels just a little off on his face but he’s just so _frustrated_. He feels like he only just woke up, he’s barely up to speed, and here’s the Organization, jeering at him, _laughing_ at him, and this agent blocking his path, smooth-voiced and pointing at him, confusing him with talk of familiar glares and _reminders_ like he could ever have forgotten something that important.

And then he’s gone in a flash of shadow and the smell of darkness and Riku wants to throw the keyblade at the wall just to leave a divot in the stone, feeling insanely like that would make him feel better, to chuck it as hard as he can and mark up the walls, exert his impossible, unfamiliar rage on something that isn’t just the walls of his own heart.

 

Riku fights through world after world and struggles not to let on that he’s tired. He slept for a year, he shouldn’t still be _tired_ , but he is anyway and he can’t help it. Even without the weight of Kairi’s heart in his chest he feels heavy, weighted down by someone else’s anger and someone else’s pain and he feels it with every step, every time the heavy slam of his keyblade turns another Heartless to dust and smoke it’s like something inside him shudders and breaks and gets even heavier. Like part of him doesn’t want to do it, even though he knows he has to.

Sometimes his eyes burn like he might cry and his vision blurs and flickers, imagining familiar unfamiliar faces, black hair against pale skin, black leather and silver zippers. Red spikes that seem more gel than hair and _eyes_ , green, that look like an aurora captured in a person’s face.

It’s exhausting him.

The feeling only barely abates when he’s Driving, when he borrows Goofy and Donald’s power to fuel his own, leaning on them more literally than he already does, using their power as a crutch and soaring on Donald’s magic and Goofy’s raw, reliable strength.

But sometimes when he reaches for them to borrow their hearts they’re not the first one to answer. Sometimes, when he is very tired and the pain in his chest is at its strongest, it isn’t Goofy’s shield or Donald’s staff that fits into his heart like a puzzle piece, but instead it’s something already inside him, something hungry and dark.

Something that thirsts for battle and claws its way up out of the depths of his soul and burns itself across his body so sharply that he leaves smoke trails when he skitters across the ground like an animal, his claws sinking into the earth to launch him forward, and he rips into Heartless with a savagery that tastes like lust and iron and fills his mouth when he bites down into soft black flesh that looks just like his own.

Some of them back away from him when he runs at them, as if in deference, as if they might take orders from him if he paused long enough to say anything, to take a _rank_ , but he never will, all he wants is their utter destruction, their evisceration, and they realize it, sometimes quick but sometimes too slow. He flies at them, claws out and teeth bared and eyes glowing gold and furious, and they lash out at him in primal, alien terror and he snarls and growls and hisses black words when their fists and claws strike him, dragging red-black smokeblood from his body and ripping dark screams from his throat that make no sound but feel loud enough to shake the earth.

When the Drive finally ends he collapses to the ground, his clothes still giving off just a little smoke. The first few times Goofy rolled him over and then jerked back, Riku’s eyes glassy and unfocused, his silver hair gone crimson in splotches from blood that may or may not have been his and his fingers twitching like he thought they were still claws, ready to rip and tear and scratch.

Even now, when it’s happened half a dozen times, his nose bleeds from strain and every time, Riku stumbles back to his feet and wipes his face with the back of a hand and smears blood across his upper lip.

He doesn’t think they can see what happens when he Drives without them, but they never ask, and he’s grateful for that.

He has no idea what he’d say.

 

“Maybe waiting isn’t good enough,” Kairi whispers out across the tide, and she always forgets how often she talks to herself when the boys aren’t there to listen, always forgets she’s letting her mouth move without thinking about it... until someone actually _answers_.

“My thinking exactly! If you have a dream, don’t wait, act! One of life’s little rules. Got it memorized?”

She hasn’t been so startled in a long time and when she jumps and spins around there’s a man watching her, tall and toothpick-thin. His coat is too dark and heavy for the Islands, he must be boiling inside it, but he and his impossibly red hair look _almost_ familiar, like a far-away memory stirring in the back of her mind of a smile that didn’t look so cruel as the one the man is giving her now. A memory of a yellow scarf and ice cream drips on cobblestones.

His eyes are green and bright, beautiful in his pale face, but they’re cold with hatred and another emotion she can’t name.

“Who are you?”

“Axel,” he says, spreading his hands. “I happen to be an acquaintance of Riku’s.”

“Riku?” she asks, and she doesn’t want to admit how something surges in her chest when he says it, like maybe, just maybe, a door is opening to give her a path forward.

“You and I have something in common Kairi... we both miss someone we care about.” He prowls closer and the feeling of familiarity is fast being replaced by fear. He makes her nervous. There’s something he wants but she doesn’t know what it is or how to give it to him, something that makes him feel _threatening_ in a way she can’t pinpoint. There’s a laugh in his voice that doesn’t reach his eyes, nor his sharktoothed smile. “Hey, I feel like we’re friends already.”

When his hand curls around her arm his grip is impossibly tight, demanding, and feels like a cage. She jerks away.

“You’re not _acting_ very friendly!”

The words seemed far more cutting and smart in her head before she said them, but heroes of Light have never been good with wit and she isn’t the only one on that beach who’s on a path to be a hero and doesn’t know it.

His smile goes dead and his eyes go blank and he scares her more in that moment than before.

She doesn’t wait for him to attack, she flees and follows the yellow dog into the dark portal before she can wonder if it’s a mistake. He leads her through a blue, glowing tunnel, and when she turns around, just once, there’s someone watching her. He’s got a coat like Axel’s but he doesn’t _feel_ scary, not like Axel did.

He feels... _warm_.

Like sunshine and smiles, like dirt between her fingers and hand-carved fishing poles.

 

Sora seals the portal behind her and his borrowed face frowns in the shadow of his hood.

He wonders how hard it would be to find Mickey. The Organization’s former Number 8 is rogue and he’s not sure what that means. Not yet.

He can’t tell yet, if it was a mistake to let this particular sick dog go. Maybe the shotgun would’ve been the better choice after all.

 

The digital world might be one of the strangest he’s ever been in, but King Mickey is waiting for them when they emerge, and his information feels like a victory. _Finally_ , he thinks, listening to Mickey talk about the Heartless and the Nobodies, _finally we have information that makes any sense_.

Mickey knows something about Sora, but he won’t say what, and it eats at him.

“So it’s Ansem’s _apprentice_ that we defeated at the Islands?” he asks. He feels sort of like his hand is glued to his chin from how much he’s holding it, thinking.

“Exactly!”

Riku nods, filing all this away. “Your Majesty... What about Kairi? The Organization may have kidnapped her.”

Mickey’s voice rises in a high, startled squeak, and he thinks. Frowns. Nods decisively. He offers help, and Riku is so grateful he isn’t sure what to say.

“Let’s look for Sora and Kairi together!”

Riku agrees, but as they run out of the castle there’s something in the King’s words that chafes at him. What happened to Sora, that Mickey won’t tell him if he’s okay? And if Mickey knows where Sora is...

Why would he need to _look_ for him?

 

Leon leads them back to the Bailey and the sight of all the Heartless in the chasm makes Riku’s stomach churn. The Restoration Committee fights in the ravine and Riku races to help.

Mickey orders them to run. To look for Kairi and Sora. Riku has never been so grateful that he’s not one of the king’s subjects when he runs forward anyway and leaps into the fray.

 

Riku doesn’t think he’ll ever forget the cold rage in Demyx’s voice.

“ **Silence, traitor.** ”

It doesn’t feel like winning when Demyx fades away, but it also doesn’t quell his anger, doesn’t keep him from yelling for more of the Organization to fight until his voice echoes on the canyon walls.

He’s not sure why he’s still so _angry_.

 

They fly away from the realm of in-between darkness and even though he loves piloting the gummi ship, this time Riku lets Goofy drive. He doesn’t want to think about the Organization’s plan, the plot to break open Kingdom Hearts with the hearts of a million fallen souls released by his own hands. _No wonder Saїx told us to keep fighting_ , he thinks, sitting at the back of the gummi ship and pulling at his hair with his hands, fingers tangled into silver. _We’re doing all their work for them. I’m the only one who_ **_can_ ** _do it, with my keyblade._

He can’t stop using the Keyblade, but how does he stop the Organization?

He looks at the photo of the blonde-haired boy again and he tucks it into the front of his shirt, letting it sit close, against his skin. It’s important, he’s just not sure why.

But who was the man in the coat who gave it to them? The bodies under Organization coats felt cold, but that one was different. He was... warm. Like sunlight on the beach.

 

World after world and he feels no closer to where he needs to be. Always ahead of him is an army of Heartless and the ends of a black coat flapping in the wind, luring him along in its wake like a kite.

He dares to hope. Just a little at a time.

 _Sora_. He’s _okay_.

He doesn’t know why Sora’s in Organization clothing, but he knows Sora too well to believe he’s _with_ them. Sora has never been capable of guile, but he’s changed since Hollow Bastion, so maybe that changed too. Whatever he’s doing, it’s with purpose.

Sora never did anything for nothing, even if the reason was one only he could understand.

 

The King speaks of Ansem the Wise and says “You might be right!” when he says Sora might have given them the photo.

“You mean Sora’s okay,” he says.

“If that’s what you think.”

 _Regicide is a crime, Riku,_ he reminds himself, with a force and firmness that is unlike him. _Goofy and Donald will not forgive you if you strangle their cheese-loving monarch, no matter how much he might deserve it._

“I think I’ve waited long enough,” he says, and his teeth grind as he says it. “Tell me, your majesty. Please. What is it you know about him?”

It is almost worth not losing his temper, when Mickey lets it slip that Sora’s alive. Almost.

“Then I can see him again,” he says with a sigh of relief.

There is a nagging sense of cosmic irony looming over him, but he chooses to ignore it. It fades, slowly, as they pick their way through the rubble-strewn mansion to the basement. They watch as Pence wrangles the computer into the digital Twilight Town, and Riku tries to tamp down his impatience.

 

They’re world-jumping so much Riku wonders why he doesn’t have a Frequent Traveler card.

The digital world feels real, but isn’t. The basement still smells like ozone and singed hair. Riku feels... echoes, maybe, of a fight here. That not-his anger surges in his chest but this time it isn’t rage, it’s. Something else. Despair, maybe. Longing.

The dark world that branches from the basement feels impossible. But isn’t.

Nobodies surge around them and they fight until Riku’s limbs tremble with the beginnings of fatigue.

“Don’t stop moving,” a voice jeers. That longing-despair-anger-sorrow-joy comes back, stronger still. The voice doesn’t sound familiar, but it _feels_ like something. Everything. Like coming home. Like collapsing into a chair after a long day of work. “Or the darkness will overtake you!”

A man who says _I kidnapped Kairi_ in the same sentence as _save her!_ shouldn’t be a friend, Riku will think later. But this is unsteady, uncertain ground, and he’ll take allies where he can get them.

 _Axel_ , he realizes, though somehow he had imagined something different when Saïx said his name in the Struggle yard.

His heart _sings_ as they fight side by side, and when they settle back to back Riku fights the strong but foreign urge to lean against the Nobody's slender back.

“Tch!” Axel says, with a laugh. “I think I liked it better when they were on _my_ side!”

“Why,” Riku says, and looks over his shoulder with a grin that doesn’t feel like his own. “Feeling a little _regret?_ ”

That’s ridiculous, his brain adds. They can’t _feel_.

...right?

“Nah,” Axel says with a sly wink that Riku doesn’t think was for _him_ exactly. “I can handle these punks. Watch _this_!”

The flare of heat is so bright he has to shield his eyes. Spots dance in his vision, the afterburn of a crimson flash that smells like a lightning strike, like burning ozone and gasoline. He blinks a few times, and when he opens his eyes the nobodies are gone, the space before the portal clear.

He turns his head, and finds Axel lying in the midst of dwindling flames. He looks pale, or at least, paler than before, and tired, the flesh of his face sunken and shadowed.

A pain Riku recognizes but knows is not his own flashes through his chest, so cold it burns, and he lurches toward the nobody on the floor, crumpling to his knees under the weight of that horrible sorrow in his heart.

“Axel,” he whispers. “You’re fading.”

Axel grins, flashes him a cocky smile, and waves a vague, tired hand. “Well, yeah. That’s what happens when you pour your whole being into an attack. Not that Nobodies actually _have_ beings,” Axel amends. He does not say _soul_ but Riku knows that’s what he means. Riku nods, and Axel grunts in something like pain. “Oh, uh, almost forgot. Sorry, for. What I did to her.”

There is a part of him that hates Axel. That wants never to forgive him for kidnapping Kairi and endangering her like this. But that part isn’t very big or loud and it’s being firmly shouted down by the part of him that hurts. That part screams about black boots on a clocktower and seashells on his pillow and promises and ice cream. Riku can’t make sense of it, but he gets the idea, maybe.

“Axel,” Riku says, keeping his voice soft. “What were you trying to do?”

“I wanted to see him again,” Axel says. Riku knows he knows who he means, but Axel’s voice is thick, choking on something Riku can only define as pain. Emotion. And that raises a whole host of questions all on its own. “He was... the only one I liked,” Axel says, and chuckles: a faint, painful sound. “He made me feel like I had a heart.” He looks over at Riku again, his expression lost, and somehow so very, very young. “Kinda funny. You make me feel the same.”

Axel opens another gateway in the darkness, and fades away to nothing before Riku’s eyes.

The pain from his fractured and patched-together heart vanishes into cold, empty loneliness. Instead, the quiet grief he feels is all his own.

 

He remembers this place, the station of his heart. Stained glass and a platform in the void.

His opponent—no. His Nobody. His Nobody fights like a man possessed. Riku _feels_ everything, like a cable tying them together. Even as they fight, they can’t ever get too far from each other, the emotions pouring between them stretching taut enough to snap.

Pain. Sorrow. Rage. Hatred.

“ _Why did he choose_ **_you_** _?_ ”

The clash of Keyblade on Keyblade is like a horrible drumbeat, clacking and deafening. His Nobody forces him into a block and dual Keyblades rain down on his in a clatter that blends into a metallic roar. Riku’s knee touches stained glass and then his blade is skittering out of reach. He stares at the head of Oblivion until he summons his blade to hand and tears it through a coat that feels empty but full of so much _hurt_ that just touching it makes his own heart ache.

 _See ya, partner_ , whispers Axel’s voice, and this time the grief belongs to them both.

 

Naminé says “Believe in yourself!” in a way that makes Kairi think there’s a great big punchline waiting for her but she doesn’t know what it is.

 

The copy of the man he defeated on the beach feels like warmth, and Riku is grateful when Kairi goes after him and forces him to linger another few seconds. Long enough for them to clasp hands, for Riku to close his eyes and see Sora the way he should look: his hair tied back in a messy, coarse tail, his eyes blazing with pride and battle-heat and regret.

“ _Sora_ ,” Riku whispers. His eyes burn with tears and he drags Sora against him, wrapping both arms around his friend. “I looked for you.”

Sora’s voice—not Ansem’s, and it feels like a step in the right direction—is soft, and a little muffled in Riku’s vest.

“Come on, Riku.”

“I looked _everywhere_ for you,” he whispers. Sora’s arms are a bit limp, but after a moment they curl limply around Riku’s back.

“I didn’t want you to find me,” Sora admits, and his voice is rough with a pain that feels so vast and jagged that Riku can’t wrap his arms around it and find the edges with his fingers. “Not like _this_.”

“You used it,” Riku says, comprehending. “You had to embrace it, and it embraced you right back.”

“Yeah,” Sora says, and he lowers his eyes, not meeting Riku’s.

“Then,” Kairi begins, then hesitates. “Then you can’t change back?”

“This fight isn’t over,” Sora says, hands balling into defiant fists. “And until it is, I need to use the darkness.”

“Fine,” Riku says, and offers his hand. “Then let’s _finish_ it. Together. You’re still Sora, and that’s all that matters.”

 

Riku tries to follow the conversation between Xemnas and Ansem, but it’s like trying to watch a film in a language you only barely studied—it almost makes sense, but true understanding is just slightly out of reach, your fingers brushing it but never quite grasping.

Sora understands it a little better, if only because he knows more of the plan DiZ—no, Ansem the Wise—has hatched.

He does not expect the mushroom cloud of piercingly bright light. It burns, even through the blindfold that no one else can see.

When his head stops spinning, Riku is hitting his knees next to him.

“ _Sora!”_ he says, sounding... _excited_. Like a child, giddy with joy. It seems utterly misplaced here. Kairi matches it, and Sora sits up, looking toward Mickey.

He can’t help it. He gasps. His vision is dark, hazy from a black cloth filter, and he sits up on his knees, tentatively touching his face. Hair hangs around his jaw in coarse, uncoordinated spikes, the tails of his blindfold limp against the side of his neck.

“Oh,” he whispers, and Mickey grins, nodding, the gesture visible as a moving form in the haziness.

Riku helps him to his feet, and Sora is immediately aware that he is, once again, about half a head shorter than his friend. Drat.

He tugs the blindfold off his face, and even in a realm owned by the darkness, the light is so bright he has to blink stars away.

“Sora,” Riku says, and grasps him by the shoulders. “You didn’t have to do everything alone.” He gestures to the others with one hand. “You’ve got all of us too. We’re your _friends_.”

Sora looks around the group, catching their eyes one by one.

“Yeah,” he says softly, and then reaches up to ruffle Riku’s hair. “I guess you’re right.”

“ _Hey_ ,” Riku says, grouchy, and bats Sora’s hand away before fixing his hair. Sora laughs, and before long Riku is laughing too.

 

Fighting alongside Sora again is indescribable.

It feels like the end of a long, long trip. It feels like diving into bed where your sheets are just like you left them, still warm, and wrapping yourself up in a teddy bear and a big fluffy quilt and sinking into that feeling of love and right and comfort. It feels like a mug of warm tea between your hands and the sound of rain on windows while you’re safely snug inside.

It feels like coming home.

Under the pale light of a shattered moon, they debate philosophy and Riku feels the Keyblade vibrating in his grip, eager to do battle.

Xemnas does not disappoint.

He cloaks himself in the shattered hearts of a hundred thousand souls, and later it will make Riku’s brain hurt with the effort of grasping the sheer scale of it, of buildings flung like skipping stones across the surface of a pond, of going into battle with the Castle’s guardian, seated and conjuring the weapons of his defeated minions.

“Think we started celebrating too early?” Sora mutters with a faint chuckle, when the castle-turned-drake seals them off from their friends and draws them into another battle with the silent, enthroned king of the never-real world.

“Maybe,” Riku says with a bitter laugh, and then they are flinging themselves through air and darkness with a speed and force that makes Riku’s heart pound, even as he sends Sora screaming toward the Xemnas-King’s barriers over and over, riding buildings to get there. They fight with a synchronous fervor that feels impossibly practiced, familiar and easy, despite how long it’s been since they sparred on the islands.

They fight to their limits in a cascade of Keyblades and light that’s not just luminescence but _Light_ and the light tap of fist to fist is glorious in its familiarity. It is a moment of calm in a storm of laser blasts and copies of Xemnas suspended in space.

Until Xemnas binds Riku in the air.

Sora’s roar of frustration is almost more lion than man and he flings himself at Xemnas like a creature possessed, fighting in a furious whirl of blade and jacket and strong, slender arms, until Xemnas has to fling everything he has at them.

If he had time to think on it, Riku might have thought that he couldn’t imagine fighting with as much ferocity as his friend.

Until the sound of Xemnas’ blade hitting Sora’s ribs makes something in him snap and fling himself at Xemnas with the force of a bullet, raining down blows so fast and hard that he knows, somewhere deep down, his Nobody is helping him, is taking his long sought and hard-earned vengeance.

He takes Sora’s red blade in hand and together, only _together_ , can they stop the king of the Organization.

Sora collapses when the fight is finally over. Riku pulls him off the ground.

“Riku,” he says, his voice soft. “Your turn. You lead.”

 

The beach is so much less lonely, when they’re both sitting on it, together.

Even if they’re alone.


	6. Dream Drop Distance

It’s instinct. It isn’t conscious. They start their test. Riku strays from the path.

Without even knowing he’s doing it, Sora skews left, diving deeper to follow. He sees ghosts of Riku as they cross paths over and over. There is an unfamiliar white X across Riku’s black shirt, under his vest, that wasn’t there before.

Sora can’t see the complicated sigil on the back of his red coat, but deep down, underneath conscious thought, he knows it’s there.

 

He made a promise. He’ll follow Riku to the ends of everything to bring him back off dark paths.

He keeps that promise.

 

Someday, they think, separately, though they are unified by their mission and by the aching, exhausted thought:

_Someday, we’ll do this together, instead of chasing each other through a half a dozen worlds with just a promise of seeing each other at the end of the road._

 

Sora only barely understands. Only barely understands why there are so many bodies (nobodies?) (somebodies?) in black coats in the white room full of thrones that should be empty. He only barely understands why it takes all of them to win.

He only barely understands why it makes his chest _hurt_ to see Riku, young and weak and limply hanging in Axel’s arms, asleep but at least protected, even though he is unable to fight back.

He screams challenges at black coats and that single, horrible old man, the mastermind, the architect of all their suffering. It doesn’t matter.

They only barely make it out. In a way, Riku doesn’t make it out at all.

And so one final time, it falls to Sora to go back in.

He keeps his promise, even though now more than ever it feels like it wasn’t supposed to be this way. That promise meant something different when he made it. He can feel that, even though he only barely remembers, only barely remembers what he said, only barely remembers what she looked like.

Mickey promises him. When Sora comes back, he’ll explain what happened the second time Sora crossed paths with Master Aqua.

 

One final time, he dives.

 

He looks into the soulless black faceplate of a suit of armor trying to protect his friend and it _hurts_ and for a single, horrible moment he realizes the armor feels like a friend, feels like a face he knows even though he’s never seen it, feels like sunshine smiles and weary wisdom.

“Let him go,” Sora says softly. The armor settles into an attack stance, keyblade up and behind in a grip Sora’s never seen before.

Sora yanks up Way to Dawn and the sound of keyblade on keyblade feels like a promise, a promise that he was made in another life, breaking into pieces.

 

When it is over, he wakes up with his head in Riku’s lap and fitful fingers fussing with the spikes of his hair. Riku looks like he wants to cry, even as he smiles.

“Sora, you lazy bum,” he whispers, and laughs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Boy oh boy this was a LONG time coming. I started this back in July 2015 after I saw a really neat rendition of a canon-swap where Sora was the one in the blindfold and organization coat and I ran off with it and never looked back.
> 
> SPECIFICALLY THAT WOULD BE THE SECOND PIECE IN THIS: http://dark-pockets.tumblr.com/post/92094276625/happy-kinda-ultra-mega-late-sorry-about-that by dark-pockets (thank u Amanda for reminding me!!)
> 
> All my love, folks! I hope y'all enjoyed this little thought experiment!


End file.
